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F ollowing an 85-79 loss to New Hampshire in the America East tournament quarterfinals, University of Vermont women’s basketball coach Lori McBride gave her team two weeks off.

Stay out of the gym and don’t pick up a basketball were the instructions McBride set forth to her players.

Vermont’s season came to an end last Saturday. By Friday, freshman Jordan Eisler was back in Patrick Gymnasium, shooting around with assistant and former UVM star Courtnay Pilypaitis.

Eisler’s classmates, Kylie Butler and Kristina White, also joined Eisler in persuading McBride to lift the “no basketball for two weeks” mandate.

“They said to me, ‘No, that’s too long coach, we have to get in the gym,’” said McBride of the freshmen’s office visit. “That says a lot about the mentality of our program and where it’s going and how we need to be this way. This is a good thing, they are not satisfied where we ended off.

“They are hungry to get that much better, they know they have a long way to go and they are anxious to get there,” McBride added.

The trio of freshmen combined to make 51 starts this winter for the Catamounts, who went 7-23 overall in McBride’s fourth season, each one tagged with at least 20 losses. Vermont also snagged the No. 6 seed for the league tournament for the second straight year, but unlike 2013, couldn’t seize another upset win despite a valiant effort last weekend.

From two long losing skids to injuries that made for disjointed rotations, the Catamounts couldn’t find the consistency McBride had hoped for at the start of the season.

But the loss to UNH — and how they played down the stretch since Senior Day — might be a sign McBride will have the Catamounts returning to past glory in the years ahead.

“Obviously, we are not happy with the amount of wins and losses. If anything, after the New Hampshire game, our team realized how close they are to being in contention for that top group of teams in the league,” McBride said. “I feel good about where we are headed and I think our team feels really good about where we are headed.”

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Eisler, for example, poured in a career-high 22 points vs. UNH and was seventh in the league in assists (3.1 per game) during the regular season, while junior Kayla Burchill, overcoming foot surgery from the year before, emerged as a scoring threat.

Burchill, despite missing eight games this season for various injuries including a concussion, averaged a team-best 12.1 points per game and made 40 percent of her 3-point attempts.

“Kayla really asserted herself as our go-to player. Jordan really showed everybody what kind of point guard she can be,” McBride said. “There is a really good core of talented players that can all compete with the best players in the league.”

White, while streaky at times, can be a 3-point gunner (51 of 150) and Niki Taylor provided 10.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game in her junior campaign. Butler (8.8 ppg, 6.0 rpg), voted onto the league’s all-rookie team, added athleticism in the backcourt this winter, but dealt with an eye injury in the final few games of the season.

The emergence of Burchill, however, has forced McBride to tinker with the offense, turning to a guard-oriented attack that the coach envisions for next year as well.

“I do think our team started to play well and started to see the possibilities,” McBride said. “There are a lot of positives to take from this season, in terms of where we are headed. The vision is clear in my opinion of where we need to go. Now, it’s just a matter of putting that effort in during the offseason.”

Defense and a front-court presence must also improve, McBride said. Vermont allowed 71.2 points per game, second-to-last in the nine-team America East.

“Our post play needs to get better. We struggled with matchups with the bigger, stronger teams in our league and that’s going to be a priority for us to address,” McBride said. “(Forwards) Annie Wheeler and Gracia Hutson really need to have good summers for us. We are looking for big things out of them.”

And that means a critical offseason for all of the Catamounts.

“Even though in some ways we are far (away), in a lot of ways we are close,” McBride said. “Every little piece of our team needs to get a little bit better and we are not going to not have that happen in the offseason. It’s going to be intense, it’s going to be just about making sure we are fully committed.”